


Alchemy

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Series: Thou art no thy lane [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual!Sherlock, Forgiveness, Friendship, Gen, M/M, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Post Reichenbach, Present Tense, Queerplatonic relationship, Random Cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-22
Updated: 2012-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after John disappears from London, someone comes to find him.</p>
<p>Teaser: <i>John is gratified that after all this time his reaction is so restrained: an ordinary blink, a slightly tighter grip on his cup with a hand gone perfectly steady, though he's sure if he were to take his own pulse the rate would be pushing a hundred.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Alchemy

Doctor Hamish Watson of Five Ashes, Sussex, who still thinks of himself as John, washes his hands in the consulting room. It's been a quiet spring; Mrs Langdon's second trimester is going well, and he needs to call the Malmsleys — he'll bet their daughter Elizabeth has already picked out half her stitches just to see what will happen. Five, and precocious, and another half-formed thought gets added to the buried list in his subconscious.

He pours himself a fresh half-cup of coffee at the break station in preparation for the next hour or so of paperwork and, with a nod to his nurse Karen, pushes open his office door.

An unwelcome man — familiar, if somewhat heavier and somewhat more bald — sits in the patient's chair in front of his desk. John is gratified that after all this time his reaction is so restrained: an ordinary blink, a slightly tighter grip on his cup with a hand gone perfectly steady, though he's sure if he were to take his own pulse the rate would be pushing a hundred. He supposes he should be grateful Mycroft waited until the end of his day, when there are no more patients on the books, to show himself.

John settles down behind his desk, swallows, and takes a deep breath. Two years, eleven months, and fifteen days of silence. His eyes trace the shape of his office, lingering over the handwritten sheets of music lovingly framed, before looking across the desk into the wrong pair of eyes. He lets his hard expression ask the question; this once, good news or bad, Mycroft _owes_ it to him to be direct.

A casual tilt of the umbrella from its fulcrum on the carpet.

"Come home, Doctor Watson."

Anything but direct. And the tone of his voice says _order_ , not _request_ , setting a cable of steel in place of John's spine, a burning pit in the place of his heart. No guarantees, he reminds himself. Never assume.

_When you have ruled out the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

The most dangerous thing in Pandora's Box.

"No."

Mycroft's sigh is an eloquent study in irritation and disbelief. Clearly, John has gone off-script, derailed Mycroft's plans for the conversation, and he has a fierce, bitter joy at having done so.

"Must you be difficult, John?" Mycroft closes his eyes, answers his own question with a murmured, "yes, of course. _Trust_ issues."

"The last three years were supposed to make trusting _easier?_ " John asks, giving Mycroft a crooked, thin-lipped smile. He takes another sip of his coffee. "Was I supposed to learn from the stellar example set by you and your brother? Or am I meant to be surprised by the revelation he survived the fall?"

"I couldn't guess at whether you had made the deduction, no." Mycroft searches the granite planes of his face. "You disappeared rather thoroughly before the shock had begun to wear off."

John hadn't vanished _that_ thoroughly, just changed enough superficial details to evade reporters, well-meaning acquaintances, and any remaining enemies who _weren't_ criminal masterminds. He'd never meant to hide from either of the Holmeses, nor been fool enough to think he could.

"I seem to recall I wasn't speaking to you, then. I'm not sure I want to be speaking to you now." It's only half a lie; he wouldn't care if he never speaks to Mycroft again, but John wouldn't give up the blessed relief he feels for anything. Wouldn't give up having something outside his own head — finally — that confirms his steady faith over the last three years hasn't been a form of madness. But the faith is braided with a subterranean fury that's been held in abeyance just as long.

"My most reliable sources tell me his work is done now. He will _need_ you, when he arrives in London."

That faint, battered fluttering about John's chest again, but even as it rises he knows his answer cannot change.

_The only thing that matters is the work._

"You found me. He knows where I am." John keeps his statements short, the words clipped. Giving Mycroft as little to read as possible.

Sherlock's brother studies him with frowning consternation, as if he'll find reasons in John's expression for the defiance of his expectations. As if he would understand those reasons when he sees them. As if Mycroft believes he should simply be able to gather all the scattered toys from Sherlock's nursery floor, and put everything back to rights for him.

"We're done here," John says; voice taut with the same force stilling his hands. He doesn't want to be looking at the man in front of him, wants the sudden, feral surge of adrenaline-spiked anger back in its box.

Mycroft draws a brief breath, more words on his tongue, but John can see the alternate paths of the conversation playing out in his blink, getting him nowhere; he presses his lips together and stands stiffly. There's no more information to be had, then; Sherlock's work is done and he's on his way home.

"I'll show myself out."

John nods, once, and doesn't take his eyes off Mycroft until the closing door cuts off his view. With the click of the latch, he sags back into the chair, closing his eyes and bringing his hands up to cover his face.

He hasn't been this close to tears since the graveside. Doesn't know if the urge is driven by relief or rage or some mix of the two, or if he's been caught off-guard by the exhaustion that can rise when a vigil nears its end.

_Stop this. Stop it._

Enough.

He straightens, looks at the tidy stack of folders on his desk, and pushes to his feet. He won't collapse and he won't go to London. What he _will_ do is take a brisk walk around the churchyard and then settle back down to finish his duties.

He's waited this long for answers.

❧

The second time he whips around and startles Karen into a squeak, John realises how much on edge he's been in the two days since Mycroft's visit; starting at shadows and sudden noises and just generally being a jumpy bastard.

He apologises; she pats his arm and tells him it's all right. He remembers her father is also a veteran and knows what she's probably thinking. She starts stepping more heavily on the carpet or shutting the doors with perhaps a bit more force than necessary, making sure he knows where she is. And he doesn't mention out loud how grateful he is for it.

He wakes too easily in the small hours of the morning. Doesn't take much: the cat taps on the window to be let in or out, the house settles, a leaf falls in the garden. Once disturbed, restless tension keeps him from falling back to sleep.

_Damn_ Mycroft, he thinks, padding into his silent, three-in-the-morning kitchen to set the kettle on. He checks his schedule and gives serious thought, for the first time since he settled in Five Ashes, to cancelling his appointments and taking some time off.

He won't. But he thinks about it.

❧

Eight days after Mycroft's visit, John is still tense but less jumpy. With no patients and Karen gone home, he almost enjoys the solitude for the last hour of the workday, finishing the remainder of his paperwork. Finally he collects his jacket and locks up the office. After a quick scan of his surroundings, he heads up the road toward his house through a cool spring evening with few clouds to block the last of the day's sun.

A rangy figure on the bench at the Butcher's Cross bus stop catches his eye. His mind swiftly assesses the stranger: close-cropped ginger hair, a garish cagoule, a hiker's knapsack at his feet. Hunched forward with elbows on knees. Exhausted. Out-of-place. Not a threat, John thinks initially, but the closer he gets the more his metaphorical hackles rise; he can't identify why, but his fingers itch to reach for the gun he wishes he still carried.

And then John's tread crosses from grass onto gravel, and the man's head snaps up and _those eyes_ reflect the twilight sky.

"Christ. _Sherlock_." His hand comes up to cover his mouth too late to prevent the exclamation. Too many conflicting desires, including the sudden unexpected impulse to bolt back the way he'd come, lock himself in his office until this bout of madness — has to be madness, we _buried him_ — goes away. There's a hollow feeling at the base of his throat that might be nausea.

He stands slowly, this strange ginger scarecrow of Sherlock, staring at John as if afraid to blink, before taking slow, deliberate steps forward.

Accelerated breathing and heart rate and if he doesn't get a grip _right this minute_ he's going to pass out on the roadside.

Sherlock gets there first, slow steps quickening so he can catch John's arm through the sleeve of his jumper, holding on fiercely. His face is thinner, cheekbones too sharp, eye sockets sunken and sleepless, but his eyes haven't changed — luminous grey, glittering with worry.

John pulls away. "Don't."

Sherlock yanks his hand back as if burned, and John stumbles two steps backward. Not ready for this, how could he have thought he'd be prepared...

He straightens his spine.

"John..." Sherlock says; a rough whisper. He closes his eyes, pulls his chin down to the side in a grimace. Shakes his head before lifting his gaze again — restrained, wary now. "I am sorry, John."

John swallows, feels his lips tighten and honestly doesn't know if the closed-off feeling in his throat is trapped tears or laughter. The throb of his pulse is fading from the spot where Sherlock gripped him, and he already wants to call that all-too-real touch back.

"We're not having this conversation in the middle of the road. The house is up this way. Give me your pack and come on."

Sherlock watches John's face closely as he backs toward the bench. His left hand, reaching down for the knapsack, displays a slight tremor. He hasn't been eating properly, that much is obvious, and John already noted his exhaustion, but neither of those things, alone or in conjunction, would have been enough to make Sherlock's hands shake almost three years ago.

He holds out his own hand, steady by comparison. Just as reluctant to take his eyes off Sherlock, unable to throw off the feeling he's hallucinating, and if he looks away the impossible figure will fade back into the twilight. No matter the strength of the grip he still feels on his arm, or the sheer incongruous detail of the color of Sherlock's hair.

Strangely obedient, Sherlock hands over the pack — absurdly light, more prop than luggage — licks uncertainly at his lips, and falls into step alongside John. Thoughts tumble over each other and tangle John's vocal cords so even if he knew what to say he'd still be silenced. He leads the way, invoking his professional training enough to provide the bit of detachment he needs. Better, until they're inside, to search for signs of injury or illness in Sherlock's gait, carriage, skin tone; though distance hardly smothers the burn of relief when he can't spot anything worse than the signs of exhaustion and malnutrition he's already noted.

John murmurs a greeting to the battered black tom sitting on his doorstep before unlocking the door; he shifts to let Sherlock enter ahead of him. The cat darts between their legs, and Sherlock steps carefully until it vanishes into the kitchen. Then he lifts that flat gaze to John's face, and it's wrong that his eyes aren't flicking about the room, absorbing every detail of John's new life.

John waits, holding that regard, until it strikes him what Sherlock must be looking for.

"I — " _I knew_. Except he hadn't, precisely, not until Mycroft had shown up. "Well. I guessed, anyway. I hoped. Tea?"

"Yes," Sherlock says, quietly, some small weight lifting from the corners of his eyes. "Please."

John sets Sherlock's pack down by the door, tosses his black jacket onto the arm of the couch and goes to the kitchen, grateful to have something to keep his hands busy while his mind still tries to sort out which of the thousand things he needs to say first. Sherlock drifts after John like a shade, lingering just at the edge of his vision.

He switches the kettle on and reaches up to pull two mugs from the cabinet. It's only when he sets them on the counter John realizes he's snagged them, automatically, with his right hand. His left isn't shaking anymore but the rest of him wants to and he braces rigidly against the lip of the counter with both hands, jaw working against the resurgent hot fury burning up from the pit in his chest. Nearly impossible to contain now he's not looking Sherlock in the eye.

"Almost three years," he says, biting down hard on the words. "You couldn't find a way to contact me in all this time? _You_."

_No one could be that clever_.

You _could_.

Sherlock is silent behind him, neither speaking nor moving for a moment, and John grips the underside of the counter's edge with cutting pressure on his thumbs.

"N-not in a way that I thought was safe enough."

"That _you_ thought was safe enough. _Safe_ enough. Christ, Sherlock. I'm not a bloody innocent and I can _damn well_ look after myself!"

John closes his eyes, swallows, too close to the edge of his self-control. Any other time, he'd grab his jacket and bolt outside, get enough cool air to calm himself down. To check his temper. Any other time.

Not an option, now.

"I know, John." He hears Sherlock settling heavily onto one of his kitchen chairs. "You can't imagine how often I wished that I could have brought you with me."

"You could have. You _should_ have," he snarls, more harshly than he intends, and opens his eyes again, pivoting to face Sherlock. "I survived Afghanistan. I would have survived your war, and not by being abandoned on the sidelines. I would have _had your back_."

Under the table, the cat hisses. Sherlock sits very still, absorbing John's anger into his skin like rain on chalk, looking down at something he holds between his two fists, pressed together on the table.

"'Friends protect people,'" Sherlock says finally, and hearing his own words, the last angry thing he said to Sherlock's face before they were separated by the four-story gulf of that terrible final act, is excruciating.

Yet Sherlock's eyes are so bleak when he looks up that everything in John freezes; his voice is so quiet: "I was trying to be your friend, John. But it all went wrong."

Sherlock stretches one hand toward him, holding a tight rectangle of paper between two fingers, and the tremor is showing again, helping the ragged page uncurl from its folds.

John has to close his eyes again, briefly, force himself to take a deep breath in and out before he can reach across the gap between them to take the offering.

A printed page, ripped from a book; folded and refolded, much-crumpled and stained, very soft under John's fingers. Beneath the pagehead that reads _To A Mouse_ , he sees the pencilled words "five types of ash" in Sherlock's neat hand.

Slowly, John unfolds the paper and reads the two stanzas:

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,  
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!  
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,  
But house or hald,  
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,  
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,  
In proving foresight may be vain:  
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men  
Gang aft agley,  
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,  
For promis'd joy!1

Light-headed, John feels himself nod, once, and swallow several times. With slow deliberation, he folds the page back into its well-worn creases.

_Mouse died out there in the desert, Sherlock._

He would have come back though, if Sherlock had called him. He had before.

"I wanted to send it to you."

John's jaw sets. This... apology, he supposes — this would have helped ease his heart, during those long wondering days and nights. Three fucking years. Sherlock's been carrying it with him a long time, most of that time. _Obviously_.

John crosses his arms over the hollow ache in his chest, the folded paper safeguarded beneath his palm. "You didn't."

For a split second, something painful tries to twist free of the flat, hard line of Sherlock's mouth, before he lashes it down again.

"Moriarty laid his trap too well. There were bullets trained on you, John. You, and Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson." His voice is smoothing out, not quite as scratchy with disuse, but slow and deep; nothing like his former rapid-fire condescension. "World-class assassins paid obscenely well to murder all of you if I didn't fall to my death. And stay dead. You were closely watched. If you had tried to come to me, or changed your habits in the slightest way because I contacted you, the others would have died."

John remembers the tattooed man helping Mrs Hudson in the stairwell and feels the blood draining from his face.

Sherlock's hands are clamped together, white-knuckled, on the table. "I anticipated his endgame, had Molly help me prepare an escape. But I failed to anticipate that I would have to maintain the charade for more than a day or two."

"You. Thought you could track down three — no, you thought you could tear down his entire web in a few _days_?" He can feel his lips twitch, fights down the lunatic urge to laugh at the sheer bloody arrogance. Knows he's leaving bruises in his own biceps; forces his fingers to ease lest he tear the precious piece of paper.

" _No_ — I thought you'd be with me! I thought I could spare you witnessing the suicide, thought I'd be back in touch with you before you even learned of it, thought we could bring him down together. I walked his tightrope but I didn't know about the assassins until the very end, there on the roof. He defeated me, he cut me off from every—"

He chokes the words off, perhaps before his thinning voice can betray him any further.

"Everyone you care about," John finishes into the vibrating silence left behind. "Anyone who might care for you."

_I will burn. The_ heart. _Out of you._

Sherlock presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, fingers digging into his hairline.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I've thought so often about this day, I gave myself three rules. Start with my apology. Shut up and listen. Don't be clever."

His voice shakes. "Please. Tell me what you want to tell me. Ask me anything."

John takes a long, deep breath, and sets the folded poem down carefully on the tea tray, freeing his hands to manage boiling water and soothing scents; ignoring the threatening damp at the corners of his own eyes.

He sets the tray down on the table, draws the second chair around and sets a mug in front of each of them.

"So Molly knew. Who else did you trust?"

"No one."

John feels the muscle in his jaw work. "Were we meant to work it out, then? Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, and me? From your bloody note?"

"I had so little time to _think_." Sherlock catches himself, drags his hands away from his eyes and lets them fall from his face. He curls both palms around the warmth of the mug but doesn't look up. "I hoped you would. I knew Mycroft would, if you passed it on to him. I had to trust that the two of you would know best when to share it with the others, if they hadn't worked it out themselves." He presses his thumb against the rim of the mug until the tip blanches white.

John sighs and scrubs a hand over his own face. "So where _have_ you been? "

"Everywhere. Norway. Russia. Tibet. Uzbekistan. I was in Khartoum a few days ago. Montpellier this morning. I tracked them all down." Sherlock speaks to the table in distant tones, far-too-familiar shadows in his dark voice. "None of you are in danger anymore."

John's heart stutters. He reaches out, wraps his fingers gently around Sherlock's wrist. Has to thrust away the memory of hunting for his pulse on the rainy pavement outside Barts.

"Sherlock."

The only response is a slight jump of the tendon under John's fingertips; thoughts chase each other in grim, silent circles behind that impassive face.

"Please."

"Moriarty has won, John. And I am lost."

" _No_."

"He groomed me to step into his shoes, and I did not disappoint him. I have become the murderer all of you feared."

John's hand tightens, and his voice, when he finds it again, is hot and dry as the simoom. "You did what you felt necessary to protect the people you care about, Sherlock. Not the same thing at all."

"Yes. I was prepared to do anything necessary. Anything at all."

John nods. "I've been there. Jefferson Hope."

Sherlock's nostrils flare. "Does it not matter, if they weren't very nice people?"

"Hope was going to kill you. The people you tracked down were planning to kill _us_. Not exactly self-defence, Sherlock, but miles and away from poisoning children with mercury-tainted chocolates. Which, by the way, I do not and have never for a moment considered you capable of."

He taps his index finger against Sherlock's wrist. "Every life matters. None should be taken lightly. And you have to live with what you've done, live with yourself. But it doesn't make you _him_."

Sherlock finally looks at him again, and now John recognizes the flatness in his silver eyes, the haunted awareness that every fighting soldier eventually acquires. He wishes, not for the first time, he knew what alchemy turns that realisation to steel in some and acid in others.

He holds Sherlock's gaze for several long moments before speaking.

"Whatever he said about grooming you, remember the object of his game this time was messing with your head. All our heads, but yours in particular. He cut you off from your friends so you'd only have _his_ voice in the back of your mind.

"Here's what I think: you killed soldiers, Sherlock, who entered this private battlefield voluntarily. What he did was turn the whole world into a battle _game_ , with innocent people as his little plastic counters, simply because he wanted to _play_ with you."

Sherlock's lips pinch together in a tight grimace; a sure sign he disagrees, but he doesn't interject, and his reticence raises the hair on the back of John's neck. Sherlock rarely gives a damn about rules, even his own, and he's never hesitated to share what he's thinking.

John leans forward, holding the eye contact. Feels how vitally important it is to pour the sincerity of his own voice into Sherlock's head, to do the only thing he can at the moment to begin countering three solitary years of Moriarty's poison and Sherlock's own doubt.

"Solving crimes, saving lives, bringing justice to bear on murderers — that can be a rush. Even when it's grim. But now you know what I know: killing is filthy miserable work, and it doesn't feel like a game. For you, for me — at the end of it all, after the adrenaline come-down, all we really want to do is go home, if we have a home to go to, and if not, find a nice quiet hole and sleep for about a week. Forget, if we can. Numb the knowledge away if we can't; go out, get drunk, get a shag, get stoned. Even when we know we might have to do it all again tomorrow."

Sherlock's restless eyes scan every nuance of John's expression, weigh everything he sees. But he's not opaque today either; John can see him resonating with the words, the idea that these are shared experiences. He's resonating himself, feels more alive than he has in ages.

"You're ruthless, Sherlock. You always have been. Ruthless and driven. Put those two together and you just come out looking a heartless bastard. But — "

"But we both know that's not quite true?"

John releases Sherlock's wrist and stands up; he doesn't know how to interpret the sharp not-quite pain bunching the muscles in his back and shoulders. There's no point in repeating himself; Sherlock knows his frustration at being left behind and can undoubtedly deduce what John would have spared him — if he had been allowed.

With John's motion, the cat gives a piteous miaow; reminding him that amongst the human drama he's forgotten his role as provider. He pulls the bowl from beneath the sink, measures out dry food on auto-pilot and sets the lot on the floor. Straightens up and stares out the kitchen window; catches himself counting stars and wondering what he has that Sherlock will eat.

"Have I?"

"Hm?" John asks, already reaching up to pull a pot out of the cupboard. Pasta will do.

"A home to go to."

"I haven't thrown you out on your ear." John fills the pot with water and sets it on the cooker to boil. With a glance at Sherlock's hunched form at the table, he steps around the cat to open the lower cabinet nearest the refrigerator; when he pulls out the pasta he discovers a jar of handmade sauce, with a label that says "from Angelo's" in Lestrade's sloppy handwriting. Small reconciliations, this past Christmas.

After a quick sniff to make sure it hasn't gone off, he pours the sauce into a pan and sets the ring beneath to its lowest possible setting. The kitchen is quiet except for the hiss of the flame and the sound of the cat crunching the dry food, until Sherlock scrapes his chair back from the edge of the table, presumably so he can better watch John.

"I...don't know what to do now. I was never able to see beyond this day." He rests his elbow on the table, leans his head against his hand, three continents of weariness beginning to overcome the tension holding him together. Sherlock unsure, Sherlock slumping: yet more discordant notes. "I am dead, I am disgraced, I am a criminal in my own right, now. I can't simply go back to Baker Street and pick up where I left off."

"Your brother would beg to differ."

Sherlock blows out an exasperated breath. "Interfering again?"

"What he does best." John casts a generous spoonful of salt into the water in the big pot. "I didn't share your 'note' with him, but I assume he knew all along."

"He must have drawn his own conclusions about my actions. And he knew when I started using an alternate identity we set up together a long time ago — the associated bank account never ran dry. But we haven't spoken."

So hard to read Sherlock's empty tone, to guess at whether his 'old resentments' against his brother have been mellowed with need, or pulled painfully tight like the ones John has borne since his last conversation with Mycroft, before the fall.

_Moriarty wanted Sherlock destroyed, right? And you have given him the_ perfect _ammunition_.

He can feel the pulse picking up in his temple, but this revival of long-deferred rage is not helpful, here, now. John swallows back the bitter lump in his throat and makes himself look back over at Sherlock, slumped wearily in the chair and yet as taut as an overstrung violin. Still wearing his jacket, as if afraid John really will toss him out at any moment.

Three years without his familiar faces.

John sighs. "You're home now, Sherlock. It's not about what _you'll_ do, it's what _we'll_ do. And we'll come up with something."

Sherlock shakes his head, a subtle note of wonder lightening his expression.

"Does your faith ever run dry, John?"

John considers his answer while rummaging in a drawer for a wooden spoon, then stirring the sauce slowly.

"Your brother arrived last week and tried to order me back to London, so I presume he's kept the flat for us. Lestrade is back on the force, reputation only slightly tarnished. Donovan, though I'm sure she tried her damnedest, couldn't link any of your cases with the tale sold by Richard Brook — and Anderson, of all people, asked them to look into him again recently. Something about the German for 'brook.'"

He can't help a faint smile at the bittersweet irony of having to explain a situation for Sherlock — that and the rightness of his friend's disdainful sniff and familiar _sotto voce_ grumble about Anderson's slow translation skills.

"You're not news anymore; I suspect, much as this will dent your ego, you're largely forgotten except by those you helped. And every one of _them_ the papers contacted insisted that you couldn't be a fake."

"And you didn't believe it either." Sherlock's shoulders are rolled in toward his chest; running his fingers into his hairline has left his ginger crop even more unruly.

"Are we really doing this? Having this conversation?" John _knows_ faith is alien to Sherlock, knows he's not questioning _whether_ John believes in him, but why. But his own words echo with an additional meaning: this is all real. Sherlock is here, home. John is learning what happened and at least some of the reasons. He hadn't wanted to punch Sherlock in the face at first sight after all. And he's finally in a position to _help_.

But Sherlock examines John's face with shadowed eyes, before he looks away again, toward the window. John wonders if he's showing too much of what he feels, or if Sherlock is at a loss to understand what he sees. Wonders how much the past three years have changed _him_ , to Sherlock's eyes.

"All right," John says. "Fine. I realize I'm an idiot, but — Buckingham Palace? Really? How exactly were you meant to pull that one from behind my ear?"

He pours a splash of olive oil in the water and adds the pasta, uses the spoon to break it up.

"There were too many things I witnessed that you simply couldn't have arranged. Or anticipating and arranging them would have required as much cleverness as you were supposed to be faking.

"So no, I never believed you were a fraud." He gazes down at the boiling water and slowly roiling pasta, neck and spine still bunched with tension. "Doubting myself, doubting whether the message was really there, having no clue why you'd stay away, stay _silent_ so long if you were alive — that was hard. Worse than the lies, almost. Understanding the bind you were in...helps."

It's harder to read Sherlock's face in profile, but his eyes search restlessly across some inner landscape, his throat and jaw twitching. And yet he manages to restrain himself to his promised simplicity: "I'm sorry."

This humility can't last and, frustrated as he's been with Sherlock's absence, frustrated as he once was with his everpresent need to show off, John's not sure he likes the look of it on Sherlock.

"I believe you," he says. The sauce has heated enough to sweeten the kitchen and attract the cat away from less appetizing fare; he stretches hesitant, imploring paws halfway up John's leg to ask him to share.

He gets the strainer out and sets it in the sink, drains the pasta, fixes plates for both of them.

"I know we'll come up with something because you and I always do when we're together. What was it you said about me? I'm a lens for your brilliance?" And yes, he'd been offended at the time, but he's had almost three years to think about what Sherlock had _meant_ rather than what he'd _said_.

_...we were always better together, even when I didn't — couldn't — follow your train of thought, your grand egotistical plan._

Sherlock doesn't answer, just pulls himself up straight in the chair as John carries the plates to the table. He offers a pale smile in thanks, accepts a fork, and leans in with some eagerness.

John takes a generous bite, and the heavenly smell of the sauce blossoms into a rich melange of flavours, even better than he remembers from Angelo's restaurant. The cat curls around his ankles, begging for his attention.

He's going back for a second mouthful when he's startled into glancing up by the quiet clink of Sherlock's fork against the table.

He feels himself frown, alarmed by Sherlock's pained expression; Sherlock gropes for his napkin, struggling to swallow the bite in his mouth.

"Sherlock?" John, halfway to his feet, reaches across the small table to touch his bicep.

Sherlock presses the napkin hard against his mouth, eyes closed and face turned aside.

"Do you need me to grab the bin?"

He shakes his head, short and sharp. Instead of holding his arm, John comes around the table and sets a hand flat on Sherlock's back; his motionless muscles are like oak to the touch, dense and rigid.

John rubs a thumb hard along his spine, trying to let loose the tremors that Sherlock is locking down by force of will. And it's hopeless — Sherlock doesn't respond at all, his muscles don't give, and there's no room to manoeuvre squeezed between Sherlock's chair and — _of course he's kept his back to the wall, just like you did when you first came back to unfamiliar familiar things, after the war_ —

"Breathe," he says, still stroking. "Swallow. Up."

Sherlock braces his hands before pushing himself up, and John guides him around the corner of the table. His hand grips John's shoulder hard for support, and John looks up into his face, worried; Sherlock shakes his head, apparently accompanying some apology he's not able to verbalise.

"Sherlock," John repeats, trying to steady him on his feet, and before he can begin to interpret the chaos he sees in grey eyes, he's pulled tight against the slippery nylon jacket: Sherlock's forearms pinned across his back and neck, Sherlock's face pressed down into his hair.

Shock jars loose a knot that rises just to the base of John's jaw. This is not — he doesn't — this is —

His arms close around Sherlock's waist in a return embrace that should be tentative and is anything but. Sherlock doesn't _do_ this — touch, affection — but everything is changing, again, and they hold each other up, holding on tight as if they never plan to let go. The warm, living body in John's arms — raspy breathing, bony ribcage, foreign smells and all — finally convinces his battered heart that Sherlock is _real_.

He presses his temple against the bare skin of Sherlock's neck, feels the pulse racing there. Comforting. He's struck by the thought he hasn't been this close to another human being since...since the brief embrace by Molly at the station, really.

A giggle escapes from his constricted throat and his hands tangle in the cagoule. He shifts so his forehead is pressed against the sharp edge of Sherlock's collarbone, breathing through his nose, trying to check the laughter.

Sherlock's arms tighten.

John's low-spoken "easy" is almost reflexive. He slides his hands to Sherlock's sides; the grip loosens and John steps back, keeping his gaze downcast for a moment because he's still fighting the agitated giggles trying to bubble up from his chest.

"John, we aren't —"

"No," he cuts Sherlock off before he can finish the thought. "No. It's still all fine."

And it is, really — they _aren't_ , because Sherlock doesn't and John isn't — even if he did accept a while ago he'd be any damn thing Sherlock needs.

Which...Sherlock came _here_. He does need John. Want to or not, forgiven or not, they need each other.

"Besides, you started it," John teases, gently, lips quirking. Sherlock looks distinctly uncomfortable but no longer haggard. "And take off that horrible jacket — which, for the record, has lost you any right you once had to complain about my jumpers."

"It's a disguise," he pouts, stripping off the offending garment.

"Yes," John says, "and a good one. The hair might have been enough, though."

Sherlock grimaces; not fond of being ginger, then. John files that away in the "do not tease about" section of his own hard drive, and gestures at the cooling plates on the table.

"Care to try again?"

He wavers. "Yes...I don't..."

"Too many things you've been away from too long, that's all. Taste and smell, memory and emotion," he shrugs, as if mentioning in passing facts Sherlock already thoroughly understands, but he's not sure Sherlock's ever experienced the visceral power of his sense-memories like this before.

_Sentiment?_

_Sentiment._

They settle back down on opposite sides of the table, in a warmer silence, more like those they'd sometimes shared at Angelo's after the end of a case.

John knows when the cat finally picks a lap because Sherlock starts and looks down, fork halfway to his mouth.

"Don't feed him," John warns.

Sherlock glances back at him, then finishes his slow, savoring bite, prepared this time for the taste of home. He lifts an eyebrow.

"Let me guess — not your cat."

"He hangs about when he wants and fucks off when he doesn't." John takes another forkful of his own dinner. "I don't even know if he's a decent mouser so, yeah. Not my cat."

He glances across the table at Sherlock. Their eyes meet. And then the light of mischief glitters in Sherlock's tired eyes, blossoming quickly into a broad, honest smile. John smiles in return and in a heartbeat they're laughing.

Sherlock's work is done, for now. Despite the hard row John knows lies ahead for forgiveness, to rebuild trust, they are _home_.

It's enough to be going on with.

❧

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to [Sangueuk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sangueuk/pseuds/sangueuk) and to [NixieD](http://archiveofourown.org/users/NixieD/pseuds/NixieD) for beta and Britpick assistance.
> 
> 1The poem is Robert Burns's "[To A Mouse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse)," written in Scots English. Here's a standard English translation of the two stanzas we quoted:
> 
> That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,  
> Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!  
> Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,  
> But house or hald,  
> To thole the winter's sleety dribble,  
> An' cranreuch cauld.  
> 
>
>> That small heap of leaves and stubble,  
> Has cost you many a weary nibble!  
> Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,  
> Without house or home  
> To endure the cold winter sleet and hoar-frost cold.
> 
>   
> But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,  
> In proving foresight may be vain:  
> The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men  
> Gang aft agley,  
> An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,  
> For promis'd joy!  
> 
>
>> But Mouse, you are not alone,  
> In proving foresight may be vain:  
> The best laid schemes of mice and men  
> Often go awry,  
> And leave us nothing but grief and pain,  
> For promised joy!


End file.
